Today’s Zippy, with yet another diner:
(#1)
That’s the Modern Diner in Pawtucket. Then there’s the allusion to the limerick beginning “There once was a man from Nantucket”.
On the diner, from Wikipedia:
Modern Diner is a historic restaurant at 364 East Avenue in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States.
Built in 1940, as one of the Sterling Streamliners, the diner was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
(#2)
Then the limerick. From Wikipedia:
“There once was a man from Nantucket” is the opening line for many limericks, in which the name of the island of Nantucket creates obscene rhymes and puns. The protagonist is typically portrayed as a well-endowed, hypersexualized persona.
The line is so well-known that it has been used as a stand-alone joke, implying upcoming obscenities or taboo language.
The earliest published version appeared in 1902 in the Princeton Tiger:There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.Other publications seized upon the “Nantucket” motif, spawning many sequels. Among the most well known are:
But he followed the pair to Pawtucket,
The man and the girl with the bucket;
And he said to the man,
He was welcome to Nan,
But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.
That gets us to Pawtucket. Then come the ribald versions (going back at least to the 1920s), taking advantage of the Nantucket / fuck it rhyme.
